- Consumer confidence slides as Americans grow wary of high costs and sluggish job gains
Source: Associated Press
“U.S. consumers were much less confident in the economy in November in the aftermath of the government shutdown, weak hiring and stubborn inflation. The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index dropped to 88.7 in November from an upwardly revised October reading of 95.5, the lowest reading since April, when President Donald Trump announced sweeping tariffs that caused the stock market to plunge. The figures suggest that Americans are increasingly wary of high costs and sluggish job gains, with perceptions of the labor market worsening, the survey found.” (11/25/25)
https://apnews.com/article/consumer-confidence-economy-55848421b5ff33ed244c8a4291f7facf
- Jakarta surpasses Tokyo as world’s biggest city
Source: United Press International
“In just seven years, Jakarta, Indonesia, took a giant leap from 33rd biggest city in the world to surpass Tokyo at the top of the list. The city has grown to 42 million residents. Nearly half the world’s population now lives in cities, and the number of megacities such as Jakarta, which are home to more than 10 million people each, has ballooned from less than 10 to more than 30 in the last 50 years, according to a United Nations report. … According to the report, the world’s three largest cities are Jakarta and its 42 million residents; Dhaka, Bangladesh, with nearly 40 million residents; and Tokyo, with roughly 33 million residents, the report said. The only non-Asian city in the top 10, the U.N. found, is Cairo, Egypt.” (11/25/25)
https://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2025/11/25/jakarta-worlds-biggest-city/6671764099677/
- Flights cancelled after Ethiopia volcano erupts for first time in 12,000 years forming huge ash cloud
Source: Independent [UK]
“A volcano in Ethiopia has erupted for the first time in nearly 12,000 years, sending a vast ash cloud across major air corridors in the Red Sea and forcing airlines in India and the Middle East to cancel or divert flights. The Hayli Gubbi volcano, located in Ethiopia’s Afar region near the Eritrean border, erupted on Sunday for several hours, spewing ash up to 14km (nine miles) into the atmosphere. Thick plumes were tracked drifting over Yemen and Oman before spreading across Pakistan and into northern India on Monday and Tuesday, according to the Volcanic Ash Advisory Centre and the India Meteorological Department.” (11/25/25)
- We Need to Do Better Than Another Enlightenment
Source: Brownstone Institute
by David Bell“The average person of the Enlightenment era, it seems to me, was not sitting around in salons sharing the free flow of ideas, but being oppressed and kicked around by their enlightened compatriots or invaders. There were some good ideas and far better art and music than much of the soulless fare of today — but this arose not from a flourishing paradise but closer to, for many, a living hell. Perhaps it was poverty and harsh reality that opened Handel’s mind and inspired Rembrandt’s brush, and we now miss something that this makes us see. But this better be by choice. Looking back to former times is a good way to learn and understand, and a person ignorant of history is like a scrap of paper blown in the wind. But history was written by the literate elite and should not be confused with a destination.” (11/25/25)
https://brownstone.org/articles/we-need-to-do-better-than-another-enlightenment/
- You Must Refuse Illegal Orders. If This Be Treason, Make The Most Of It.
Source: Garrison Center
by Thomas L Knapp“It’s been 40 years since I spent the summer in San Diego becoming a US Marine. I’m sure things have changed since then, but I doubt they’ve changed so much that anyone graduates any armed forces boot camp without receiving instruction in the Uniform Code of Military Justice. A summary, from memory, on the section (Article 92) concerning orders: You must obey lawful orders. You must not obey unlawful orders. … If it’s ‘treason’ or ‘sedition’ to state that fact, then every instructor in every basic training class on military law is a traitor who’s been teaching treason and preaching sedition to every recruit since 1950, when the UCMJ was adopted … and probably long before that.” (11/25/25)
- Localism, Not Nationalism, Will Cure What Ails Rural America
Source: Persuasion
by Jeffery Tiler Syck“The collapse of rural towns, small industrial cities, and remote farms has coincided with the decline of local cultures. A local identity brings with it pride of place and a certain willingness to live with the disadvantages endemic to the location. When people feel that their locality serves a purpose—that it is embedded within a larger whole — they are willing to tolerate or even embrace its remoteness, slower pace of life, and faulty infrastructure. Rural Americans once thrived on a belief that for all their region’s faults, they were the backbone of the nation. But [JD] Vance’s concept of the nation does not restore this sense of local pride. Instead, it substitutes a globalized vision of tradition for a local one.” (11/25/25)
https://www.persuasion.community/p/localism-not-nationalism-will-cure
- Filling the Swamp
Source: Independent Institute
by Sam Jenson“In September 2024, U.S. border czar Tom Homan met with undercover FBI agents acting as business executives. According to sources interviewed by The New York Times, he accepted $50,000 hidden in a CAVA bag and guaranteed those undercover agents lucrative federal contracts. FBI agents recorded Homan accepting the cash as part of a broader probe into corruption within the Trump administration. This is corruption. In September, a Trump appointed DOJ official called it a ‘deep state’ probe. Despite having recorded evidence of Homan accepting the bribe, the White House denies any wrongdoing on Homan’s part. … Homan’s case is not an isolated incident.” (11/24/25)
https://www.independent.org/article/2025/11/24/filling-swamp-homan/
- Trump’s “Unlawful Orders” Dispute
Source: Antiwar.com
by Ted Galen Carpenter“President Donald Trump is at the center of yet another bitter constitutional crisis. His political adversaries have mounted a concerted campaign urging military personnel to disobey any ‘illegal orders.’ Trump responded to such calls by threatening to prosecute and even execute proponents for engaging in ‘seditious behavior.’ Since the U.S. Constitution designates the president as commander-in-chief of the armed services, Trump is, of course, currently at the top of the military’s chain of command. Defiance by subordinates, he asserted, would constitute treason. There are numerous important issues at stake. They include the proper extent of the president’s powers under the Constitution, preserving civilian control of the military, the nature of the oath that military personnel take to protect and defend the Constitution, and the appropriate remedy if it appears that the president as commander-in-chief has given an unlawful order.” (11/25/25)
https://original.antiwar.com/ted_galen_carpenter/2025/11/24/trumps-unlawful-orders-dispute
- Elon Musk exposes real foreign racists with based new X feature
Source: The Hill
by Robby Soave“Location, location, location. That’s what matters now on X, because Elon Musk has just rolled out a hugely important new feature, and it’s confirming what some of us have suspected was the case for some time now. It turns out that many of the openly racist and anti-Semitic accounts on X that claim to be America First but are actually giving MAGA a bad name — well, they’re not true America First at all. In fact, they’re largely coming from Muslim countries. And now we have the proof. A week ago, Fox News personality Katie Pavlich, a friend of mine, posted on X: ‘Hey @elonmusk, please make it mandatory that wherever an account is based – country – be featured in an account’s public profile. Foreign bots are tearing America apart. Thanks.’ In response, Nikita Bier, head of product development at X, said, ‘Give me 72 hours.’ And now, X has delivered.” (11/24/25)
https://thehill.com/opinion/robbys-radar/5620581-elon-musk-exposes-foreign-bots/
- The arithmetic of availability: Prospects for American grid dominance in 2030
Source: Niskanen Center
by Kenneth Sercy & Liza Reed“Energy policy debates often sound like a choice among competing visions of which type of energy would best power America’s future: ‘dispatchable,’ on-demand power produced from fossil fuels and nuclear energy, or quick-build, cheap energy from renewables such as wind and solar? If only our choice was that simplistic. The reality, however, is that between now and 2030, surging demand for energy will collide with longstanding bottlenecks on new capacity. This mismatch between supply and demand stands to limit how much energy the grid can deliver to build homes, create jobs, support national security, drive the economy — everything we count on energy to do. Meanwhile, competitors such as China are able to rapidly bring new capacity online for data centers and other economic and security imperatives.” (11/25/25)
- Outernet Integrity
Source: Common Sense
by Paul Jacob“The Internet is a global network. Update a website or type an email over here, in a jiffy it ends up over there, even if ‘there’ is thousands of miles away. Now, in cases where the connections of the interconnection get disrupted, the electrons (well, ‘packets’) are routinely diverted to a more stable path. … But not always. Certainly not if we’re talking about a major undersea data cable. Were such a cable accidentally severed — or deliberately severed, by a hostile power practicing for war, say, the People’s Republic of China — transmission of data between affected countries may stop dead until the cable can be fixed. Declan Ganley wants to cure this particular vulnerability by building an alternative he calls the Outernet, a space-based version of the Internet that bypasses the earthbound network entirely.” (11/25/25)
https://thisiscommonsense.org/2025/11/25/outernet-integrity/
- If you expect transparency on Epstein now, you don’t get the swamp
Source: USA Today
by Cameron Smith“It’s hard to imagine a greater political opportunity than releasing the full, unredacted Jeffrey Epstein files. The late financier was an unscrupulous magnet for the world’s most powerful. The task from President Donald Trump’s base was simple: Release the names, prosecute the guilty and prove that the government, when properly led, won’t protect the rich and connected. Instead, we got months of resistance, bizarre denials and attempts to frame the issue as a ‘Democrat hoax’ …. After all the performative huffing and puffing, the Epstein Files Transparency Act passed the House with just one dissenting vote, flew through the Senate and was signed into law by Trump. That’s nearly unanimous consent from a Congress that can’t agree on lunch. … One would think that would be the end of the story and transparency would flow like waterfalls. Unfortunately, that’s not how swamp water works.” (11/25/25)
- Ozymandias on the Potomac: Energy Policy and the Politics of American Decline
Source: TomDispatch
by Alfred McCoy“At the dawning of the British Empire in 1818, the romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley penned a memorable sonnet freighted with foreboding about the inevitable decline of all empires, whether in ancient Egypt or then-modern Britain. In Shelly’s stanzas, a traveler in Egypt comes across the ruins of a once-monumental statue, with ‘a shattered visage lying half sunk’ in desert sands bearing the ‘sneer of cold command.’ Only its ‘trunkless legs of stone’ remain standing. Yet the inscription carved on those stones still proclaims: ‘My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ And in a silent mockery of such imperial hubris, all the trappings of that awesome power, all the palaces and fortresses, have been utterly erased, leaving only a desolation ‘boundless and bare’ as ‘the lone and level sands stretch far away.'” (11/25/25)
- Jeffrey Epstein Aided Alan Dershowitz’s Attack on Mearsheimer and Walt’s “Israel Lobby”
Source: Drop Site
by Ryan Grim & Murtaza Hussain“Epstein and Alan Dershowitz collaborated on smear campaigns against Mearsheimer, Walt, and an underage assault victim making allegations against Epstein — in the same week.” (11/25/25)
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/jeffrey-epstein-aided-alan-dershowitz-mearsheimer-walt-israel-lobby
- The Wobbling of King Trump
Source: Foreign Policy
by Michael Hirsh“[I]n the longer reach of Western history, Trump’s behavior is far more a rule than an exception. He is, really, just another giant ego out there smashing things and trying to rebuild them in his own image — perhaps even to the good on occasion. And there’s something strangely reassuring in that. Why? Because like the most extreme autocrats of the past, who almost invariably fell through arrogance and overreach, we’re already starting to see cracks in the reign of the would-be Emperor Donald the First.” (11/25/25)
- The Nation’s Guest
Source: Law & Liberty
by Iris de Rode“New York, August 16, 1824. The guns had scarcely fallen silent when the bells began. Bunting unfurled; apprentices scrambled onto rooftops; veterans pinned sun-faded cockades. A steamboat shrieked past Staten Island as ferries veered in for a glimpse of the man the papers called the Nation’s Guest. Then the figure who had once ridden beside Washington — older now but unmistakable — stepped ashore at Castle Garden: Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier de La Fayette, Marquis de La Fayette. At the subsequent reception, ‘In they came, rich and poor, Black and white … old veterans, young soldiers.’ For thirteen months and more than six thousand miles, through all twenty-four states, variations of that scene replayed: processions, banquets, tears, toasts. Ryan L. Cole’s The Last Adieu invites us to follow Lafayette’s Farewell Tour — and asks why it mattered.” (11/25/25)
- From lawfare to lawflop: Trump case dies, but could rise again
Source: Fox News
by Jonathan Turley“If we are living in an age of lawfare, it is fast becoming a war of attrition. The dismissal of the indictments against former FBI Director James Comey and current New York Attorney General Letitia James is the latest twist in the controversial prosecutions of Trump antagonists. James immediately posted a message celebrating the decision, but she may want to focus on the prepositional phrase following the word ‘dismissal’: ‘without prejudice.’ The administration may still be able to revive these cases. James’[s] victory lap on social media is a fitting addition to the opinion, which emphasized President Donald Trump’s social media postings about these cases. U.S. District Judge Cameron Currie noted that Trump had demanded the indictment of these and other individuals shortly before the charges were handed down.” (11/25/25)
- Rising, 11/25/25
Source: The Hill
“Robby Soave gives his radar on the new X feature that allows user to see what country an account is based in, and how it could expose problems with the platform’s revenue sharing program.” (11/25/25)
https://thehill.com/hilltv/rising/5621769-rising-november-25-2025/
- Ron Paul Liberty Report, 11/25/25
Source: Ron Paul Liberty Report
“Inside Bibi’s Diary.” (11/25/25)
- Capital Record, episode 270
Source: National Review
“The Next Fed Chair Should Be Kevin Warsh.” (11/25/25)
https://www.nationalreview.com/podcasts/capital-record/the-next-fed-chair-should-be-kevin-warsh/
- So to Speak: The Free Speech Podcast, 11/25/25
Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
“Donor disclosure and campaign finance at SCOTUS.” (11/25/25/)